| Carlos Zingaro |
| 03-10-1999 00:00 |
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I suppose it's not far reached to gather that improvised music is slowly splitting into 2 separate (somehow connected?) approaches. The "free Jazz" neo-revival where you find known musicians that, years ago, were radically considering themselves as non-Jazz entities, now comfortably putting themselves into the "Jazzman" role and, on the other side, the radical "non-idiomatic" field, looking with some contempt at everyone else that "dares" to play a phrase, a snippet of melody or anything remotely familiar... Feeling as I do that improvised music, being first of all a technique, has a wide range of expression and references - hence its value and richness for me - the sole concept of putting its practice into "closed" frames of intent and/or expression becomes a weird idea and is somehow creating even more separate factions into an already difficult practice and fragile survival. No way I want to be "moralizing" on this subject. It's just a brief and subjective consideration on today's ways of "free music"...
Most people playing free come from the tradition of "mainstream," some come back to it, for instance Schlippenbach with his records dedicated to Monk or Jelly Roll Morton compositions, or Anthony Braxton. How do you relate yourself to this tradition? There are people who refuse to know it, they improvise but the tradition they come from is another one. Do you think both traditions can seriously get in touch?
Even though listening to Charlie Parker, Ornette Coleman, Eric Dolphy and "free Jazz" in general back in the '60s and '70s was of great importance to me, my background was classical music and then contemporary music with (John) Cage up front. He was not very keen on improvisation but, for me, general concepts with contemporary/experimental music were maybe of greater importance than anything else. Anyway, I love music! From ethnic, to Jazz, rock, new, whatever is seriously done with no compromises is of great interest even though I listen less and less to recorded music - no time to... I feel that we're going through a time of fast changes, of global information and speedy connections. All mingling should be possible, any mixing of traditions should be welcome as a means to get into something else! I should point out that I dislike the references collage of some musicians/composers though...
How did you come to listen to Jazz?
I was playing in this Lisbon chamber orchestra from the age of 13 and there were some double basses lying around which I used to have fun with, ruining my violin fingers with some "walking bass," mimicking some of the lines listened on some of my father's records - Ellington, Basie, King Cole, etc. Then there was the great Stuff Smith (more than Grappelli, who was too slick and smooth for me, frustrated as I was with the academic violin playing). And, of course, Ornette and his violin playing! I knew he had no violin technique whatsoever but I loved it and wanted to sound like that... even bought an electric Fender violin when I realized he was playing one! Ponty was doing some interesting stuff back in the late '60s and early '70s, just before he got into the fusion/Jazzrock melting pot. SugarCane Harris was great with Zappa! Of course Leroy Jenkins was the big reference in the music I was more directly involved with, as well as Michael Sampson, to a lesser degree as he was someone obviously coming directly from classic - just like me... But, again, I had to be careful in my beautiful and peculiar country... Ponty played Lisbon back in 1972 or '73 with his trio - I was already playing free form music and amplifying the violin for years (since my rock days in the '60s). Nobody used to give a shit about it and the "true Jazz" local apostles even used to say that the violin was not suitable for Jazz! Then Ponty comes and everybody begins to say that I'm the Portuguese Ponty or that I was copying him or that he was a direct influence... I had been careful enough not to play one Ponty line ever, exactly because I knew that could be the local reaction besides not being interested in copying other violin players in general. But, of course, Portugal's cultural clique was (is) small and mean! So I was branded for years...
You played in your last tour also in trio with Joe McPhee. How was it to play with him? Did the music get a new quality playing with two free Jazz sax players?
It was just an encore piece we played together and Joe was playing the pocket trumpet. Quite interesting that everybody was playing very soft and melodic and it was a very nice and delicate acoustic piece of music.
Why does the balance in your work with Daunik (Lazro) get better when you meet a third voice like the guitar of Raymond Boni? Sometimes in improvised music a trio becomes a sort of two duos and the communication among three players makes things more difficult.
Let me rephrase that... It's not that playing as a trio gets better than playing duo with Daunik! Sometimes the duo has these fantastic magic moments of interaction and togetherness. Sometimes with Boni things were tough because of the volume level... It's just a different thing and, I admit, I like trios, maybe because it adds this extra challenge to the dialog as I avoid the "two duos syndrome." I made (and still do) lots of duos - most of my recordings are as duos (with Teitelbaum, Peggy Lee, Joelle Leandre, Daunik, etc.). But the trio, being more demanding, is this different entity, where things are questioned and dealt in, sometimes, puzzling ways... and that's the challenge and risk I like. Why such strong fond memories from some of the trios I had: the Canvas with Joelle and Rudiger Carl or the trio with Roger Turner and the missed Tom Cora.
Tom Cora was one of the few cello players in new/free music. Could you speak about the music you made with him?
I was exchanging letters with Tom back in 1979, when he was working at Creative Music Foundation/Woodstock. That same summer, and thanks to being offered a Fulbright Grant, I went to spend some months there, teaching and learning and that was when we played together for the first time. I must say that playing with another string player is both a pleasure and a tricky situation, where you have centuries of tradition and reference/information to cope with and try to escape from eventually! Playing with Tom was great and there was a togetherness and complicity that was fun and thought provoking most of the time! He was fast on split second new material proposals and it was exciting venturing on so many new territories. Few of our improvised concerts were met with stunned questions from people in the audience on "who composed what." Let me be clear, for the purists' sake, that I don't mean to imply that improvised music should be good only when taken as "composed."
You played also with bass players such as Kent Carter. What does rhythm mean for you? Will you be playing again with a "normal" rhythm section or it is a kind of experience which is over for you?
With Kent I began working back in 1977 when attending a Steve Lacy workshop at the Chateauvallon Festival in the south of France. I was invited to collaborate in his first record La ContreBasse (Le Chant du Monde Records), a long month of huge studio work where we were supposed to play all the parts of a large string orchestra. It was, again, a very strong exchange, the first of several I would be blessed with in the following years in my meetings with bass players (Joelle Lèandre, Peter Kowald, Barre Phillips, Marcio Mattos, etc.). Interesting that those late seventies were a period where I was starving for "free" music while Kent was getting steadily into composing/score writing... Of course I would be much more involved and thrilled with the improvised concerts than with the "written" ones where I felt too much back into my recent past! Actually, I'm pretty sure that the spontaneity of the improvised concerts was getting a better and fresher music than the compositions were - this being true for most of my personal experiences in this matter. Quite curious to know that Kent is back and playing with Peter Brotzmann... By tradition, I play a "melodic" instrument (whatever this means nowadays) but rhythm, even besides the straight musical concepts, has always been of the utmost importance for me! A performance (music, theatre, dance, etc.) without rhythm is a dead end... By rhythm I don't mean necessarily the syncopated pulse associated with the word but, mostly, the balanced use of silence and sound, movement and stillness, that will keep the energy of a performance going and the spectators/audience with it! I played in "rock" bands and some "Jazz" as well... I went through some of the "free Jazz" tradition for a while. I love to play with percussion instruments. I love (sometimes...) to play with a beat. Let's say that, also because of the acoustic characteristics of my main instrument, I'm not very keen into getting back into the "free Jazz" combo, where there are levels of intensity uneasily solved by te violin unless it's hugely amplified and that I shy away from... When things get very exciting it's the horns and drums world!!! I'm sure (and I defend) that there's a place for any kind of sound, music, aesthetic, form, whatever, nowadays. I just live uneasily with some forms getting everything, all the space and attention, to the detriment of others... Hence, I'm not interested into getting back into the traditional combo formula...
Some composer puts things together, and they call it a development of the Jazz music. The references collage of some musicians/composers do not look very inspired. Do you think this is a right/wrong way to refer to Jazz tradition?
I don't know very well what the "Jazz tradition" means today. I'm afraid some people put "Jazz" into a formal/academic perspective, where musicians should play (or interpret) in such or such school of thought and must refer to the considered masters! The field is ripe for the more diverse extremisms and revisionist or reactionary views and approaches... I must say that I don't care that much for the contemporary composer that tries to refer to the "Jazz tradition" in a series of collages of no consequence or inner coherence... maybe because of this I'm pretty much off the "Jazz scene" in general, in what regards compositions or blatant references! I like to be surprised! Maybe there's nothing new and everything has been done or invented but there are multiple combinatory possibilities yet to explore... so many chances and risks to take... It's a good thing to mix, we're living through a world of re-mixing! Even if lots of times it is just garbage, there might be the glimpse of something just lurking around the bend...
I think your music still has a lot of surprises. Without taking risks it is hard to listen to something new.
Sincerely hope so... as far as I keep being committed and thrilled by it all...
Do you think there is some point in the music you have made in the past you would like develop once again?
Wow! A tricky question... Really don't know. There were some great moments in years past. Maybe their richness was because they were moments unrepeatable in time... Talking about forms, I don't think I want to go back to classical, or free Jazz, or rock, or folk... It was good (sometimes) while it lasted and I moved on (I hope). It helped my experience, and vocabulary, and knowledge and, most of all, how to interact with others through music.
Your music lives in the moment, in the meeting with players and different musical situations. And that is what we expect from real improvisers! Let's give a look at your colleagues, some of them have played successful fusion, but their musical work was not, after many years, of great interest. Some others, like Leroy Jenkins, seem to have developed a musical world of their own, making the violin part of the Afro-American music.
Could you imagine an improvised meeting with his fiddle?
Leroy has always been a very strong image for me in the contemporary violin playing. I don't think I'm influenced by his technique or language - at least, never did anything in order to study his playing. What I care mostly is the way he integrates the violin in the overall ensemble and the almost "nonchalant" way he phrases around structures and into improvisation. Unfortunately, we never met. I could easily imagine a meeting and I would be honored to play with such a fantastic and sadly underrated musician.
Billy Bang, has his work been of interest for you?
Let me say that all violin playing has been of enormous interest and curiosity for me and I might have one of the largest violin record collections, at least in Portugal... Billy was a nice surprise when the String Trio of New York came about. Quite different from Leroy. Actually it's impossible to compare both as far as I'm concerned... He sounded much more involved in the Jazz idiom than Leroy. I got some of his first LPs and then kind of lost interest.
George Haslam said: "I still enjoy playing many kinds of music; even in the same performance I may mix a ballad or other standard with the free improvisation. If I was told I could not do that then it would not be 'free'." Do you feel this is true for you too?
Absolutely! For sure it's a difficult task to have a coherent language issued by years of experiences and references... For me the scary part is to avoid being caught into the "collage" approach. I don't care at all for the demonstrative/illustrative playing as I don't consider it improvisation at all and it gets me quite upset... If, during the fast split second of spontaneity, we honestly feel the musical need for a melody fragment that somehow fits, in a coherent and consequent way, in the overall context, who's supposed to be the police coming and prohibiting it? I know - and I love it - that there's this kind of ongoing "war" between idiomatic and non-idiomatic improvisation, whatever this means! It's mostly an intellectual/conceptual/musicologist argument that, when playing, I don't want to care that much about... I was playing written concepts and structures from the age of 4 till my 20's. Let me play whatever I feel like whenever I want... and just judge me by that and not from my speeches or concept writings! (But, again, maybe this is a passé attitude and I'm out of touch...)
October 3, 1999 - Paris, France |
Cadence |
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